1. Field of the Invention
The invention relates to vehicular driving assist apparatus and method for determining a locus of run to a target position and assisting the driving of a vehicle so that the vehicle follows the locus of run.
2. Description of the Related Art
A related-art technology for guiding a vehicle to a target position through the use of the automatic steering, the steering command, etc., is disclosed in, for example, Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open Publication No. 5-297935. In this related technology, in order to precisely guide a vehicle to a target position and cause the azimuth angle of the vehicle at the target position to coincide with a target azimuth angle, three basic track patterns are prepared. Then, in order to compensate for errors in position, azimuth angle and curvature, a cubic equation is solved. Using the thus-provided solution, the track patterns are similarity-transformed so as to set a target track.
However, in this related technology, since it is necessary to solve a cubic equation and therefore perform computation of complex numbers, the load of computation becomes great. Therefore, the real-time execution of this calculation is difficult for the existing computing units installed in vehicles. Furthermore, the use of a high-performance computing unit leads to a cost increase, and is therefore unfavorable.